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HANOI: A Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for fraud totaling $27 billion will no longer face execution, her lawyer said Wednesday, as the country abolished capital punishment for eight crimes, including property embezzlement.

Property developer Truong My Lan’s lawyer Giang Hong Thanh said that her death penalty “will be converted to life imprisonment... I informed Ms. Lan this morning, she is very happy.”

Vietnam on Wednesday abolished the death penalty for eight crimes including espionage, graft and attempting to overthrow the government, according to state media.

Lan, 68, was convicted last year of swindling money from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) – which prosecutors said she controlled – and sentenced to death for fraud with damages totaling $27 billion – equivalent to around six percent of the country’s GDP.

She appealed the verdict in a month-long trial, but in December the court in Ho Chi Minh City determined that there was “no basis” to reduce her sentence.

But the court said Lan’s sentence could be reduced to life imprisonment if she returned three quarters of the stolen assets.

“If Ms Lan compensates for three quarters of the losses along with some other conditions, she will continue to be considered for a further reduction of her sentence,” lawyer Thanh said Wednesday.

Lan “is still actively cooperating with state agencies of Vietnam and her partners to find ways to deal with (her) assets and restructure SCB to come to a final solution to the case.”

Lan owned just five percent of shares in SCB on paper but courts concluded that she effectively controlled more than 90 percent through family, friends and staff.

Tens of thousands of people who had invested their savings in the bank lost money, prompting rare protests in the communist nation.

In a separate $17 billion money-laundering case, Lan had a life imprisonment sentence cut to 30 years on appeal in April.

According to the amended penal code approved by the National Assembly Wednesday, the eight crimes no longer punishable by death include property embezzlement and bribe-taking.

Under Vietnamese law, those sentenced to death for the eight crimes – which also include spying and anti-state activities – before July 1 will have their sentences converted to life imprisonment by the chief judge of the Supreme People’s Court.

Minister of Public Security Luong Tam Quang said “the current structure of capital punishment was problematic and, in some cases, misaligned with evolving socio-economic conditions and the realities of crime prevention.”

One of the reasons for the move given by Minister of Justice Nguyen Hai Ninh was that in most cases people sentenced to death for the above crimes were not actually executed.

The number of executions has not been made public, but Amnesty International estimates more than 1,200 people were on death row in Vietnam by the end of 2024.

THE HAGUE: There is no alternative to higher defense spending in light of the ongoing threat from Russia, NATO chief Mark Rutte said on Wednesday.
“Given our long-term threat of Russia, but also the massive build-up of the military in China, and the fact that North Korea, China and Iran are supporting the war effort in Ukraine, it’s really important we spend more. So that will be number one on the agenda today,,” Rutte told reporters before meeting with world leaders at the NATO summit in the Hague.